In addition to its primary shooting gameplay, Astro Blaster also had a lot of little secret bonuses that could be earned for performing specific tasks, such as making it through an entire stage without raising your laser temperature above a certain heat or brushing against the docking arms on the refueling ship before docking. The game had other interesting mechanics for its time, such as a temperature gauge that temporarily disabled your weapons if you fired too quickly, and a "warp" button (usable once per life or per sector) that provided a few seconds of slow motion "bullet time".
The game could be lost either by losing all ships or by running out of fuel. The fuel gauge decreased steadily, but refilled completely at the end of each sector. In addition, small falling asteroids could be collected for a few seconds' worth of fuel. When the gauge was nearly empty, with less than ten seconds of fuel left -- "fuel status critical" -- all points scored would be doubled. This allowed skilled players to intentionally let their fuel run very low, collect asteroids to keep from running out of fuel completely, and score double points indefinitely; but this was a very high-risk tactic, since missing a single asteroid would likely cause the player to lose the game.
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